House Speaker Mike Johnson visited Columbia University’s campus on Wednesday afternoon and said he would demand that President Joe Biden intervene in pro-Palestinian protests that have taken place on campus for over a week — including by potentially calling in the National Guard to dismantle encampments. His statement echoed calls from his Republican colleagues Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who have already asked for the National Guard to be sent in to clear out the protesters. (Cotton has also, in a now-deleted social media post, suggested that people should violently confront pro-Palestinian protesters on the streets.)
These Republicans’ calls for troops to be sent in to repress peaceful student protests are incredibly chilling. They also reflect the GOP’s generally extreme attitudes on the Israel-Hamas war and intolerance of rhetoric remotely critical of Israel. For Johnson, trying to seize control of a wedge issue for Democrats using aggressive law-and-order rhetoric also provides a convenient opportunity for political stagecraft as he faces internal dissent in the House.
But Johnson and his colleagues sense opportunity in trying to make this a federal matter and calling for even more extreme escalation.
On-campus protests escalated last week when a group of Columbia University students pitched tents on one of the lawns on campus in the middle of the night to create what they called a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” As a Columbia University student and journalist explained in The Nation, the occupation was organized by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition, Students for Justice in Palestine and the anti-Zionist Jewish group, Jewish Voice for Peace. They described themselves as operating within a long tradition of anti-racist and anti-war dissent at the university. “Columbia University has a rich legacy of student activism, from Vietnam War protests in 1968 to being the first Ivy League school to divest from Apartheid South Africa in 1985,” CUAD said in a statement. “The Gaza Solidarity Encampment will remain until Columbia University divests all finances, including the endowment, from corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine.”
In his remarks at Columbia, Johnson painted the campus as a violent hellscape overrun by “lawless agitators” who “attack our innocent Jewish students.” But Johnson’s portrayal of a violent environment doesn’t match the reality documented by NBC News reporter Antonia Hylton, who wrote about her time on campus last week: “Our team spent long hours reporting on and around Columbia’s campus on Thursday & Friday. … I didn’t see a single instance of violence or aggression on the lawn or at the student encampment. The student-led protest was peaceful and often very quiet.” Hylton added that “the only moments of conflict or aggression I witnessed took place beyond the gates,” where nonstudent demonstrators gathered. Hylton’s account of a generally peaceful environment on campus tracks with other news accounts, as well as descriptions of peaceful protest from Columbia University faculty and the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute.
Despite the prevalence of calm, Columbia University last week called in the NYPD to disperse the protesters, and over 100 were arrested. The NYPD reported no violence at the encampments, and NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said, “The students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”
A reasonable person would take stock of this situation and realize that the protests are a university matter. Moreover, a reasonable person would note that Columbia — as well as many other colleges around the country where similar encampments have sprung up in recent weeks — has already deployed extreme and excessive force by calling in police to arrest peaceful protesters. These police raids at various campuses have resulted in the tasing of protesters, mass arrests of students and brutal detainment of faculty. The administrators of the ostensibly liberal bastion of academia have revealed their own illiberal and domineering tendencies when it comes to protests on this issue.
But Johnson and his colleagues sense opportunity in trying to make this a federal matter and calling for even more extreme escalation. Manufacturing the spectacle of college campuses overrun by unhinged leftist thugs allows the GOP to distract the public from Israel’s brutal and indiscriminate operation in Gaza, support for which has declined significantly among Americans. In a depraved appraisal of who deserves freedom to act as they wish and who doesn’t, many Israel hawks (who exist in both parties, just in greater numbers in the GOP) peddle the idea that Israel has the right to total impunity for its violence, while advocating for aggressive repression of peaceful objections to that violence at home. Historically, college campuses have hosted and produced some of the most salient and well-organized anti-war dissent in America. Calling in the National Guard is an attempt to definitively crush these movements and temper their ability to sway public opinion.
Calling in the National Guard is an attempt to definitively crush these movements and temper their ability to sway public opinion.
Johnson also stands to raise his status within his own party from the absurd grandstanding. A huge part of the Republican caucus has been furious with him for his support for Ukraine aid, and MAGA firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been threatening to attempt to topple him from the speakership. But Johnson can count on the party to unite behind him on Israel; he knows he will get full-throated support both from the more traditional parts of the party and the MAGA wing for expressing unyielding support for Israel’s military operation — and for painting its critics as madmen and terrorists.
Israel’s brutal operation in Gaza is a wedge issue for Democrats — and Republicans are hoping to capitalize on it. While Biden and much of the Democratic party establishment have defended Israel’s conduct, progressives, young people and an increasing number of moderates see Israel’s behavior as indefensible, and sometimes as genocidal. By taking the most aggressive conceivable position on the student protests, Republicans can try to woo Israel hawks in the Democratic Party.
Lost in all this obscene politicking is the core matter that the protests seek to draw attention to: Israel’s attacks on Gaza are killing tens of thousands of innocents and have ruined the lives of far more. Johnson’s outrageous calls for repression not only distract us from something the U.S. has a responsibility to stop backing, but threaten to silence efforts to seek an end to the violence Israel’s government continues to carry out.
